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Rejoice, sysadmins, there's a new glamour job nobody understands

Gartner's anointed 'IoT Architect' as the must-have business card of tomorrow

Data scientists are reeling, having seen their business cards marked down by up to 70 per cent in value, in after-hours trade overnight.

The reason? Analyst, Magic Quadrant layout artist and all-round Delphic oracle Gartner has anointed “Internet of Things Architect” as the new go-to job description.

Sorry, data scientists, if you didn't make hay the instant Gartner asked your hand in marriage in 2012, it's too late.

As the firm's vice president and research director, Cloud Computing and Data Center Strategies, Drue Reeves writes:

“An IoT Architect is an IT leadership position that is responsible for the vision, strategy, architecture and shepherding of IoT solutions from inception to deployment”

Reeves reckons IoT architect will command cloud architect-like salaries (which he pegs at US$160,000) and has a similar professional outlook (obviously, stellar, since who blogs about dead-end jobs in which you merely make sure the company's IT keeps running like a 1951 Land Rover?).

Sure, there are IoT architect roles that will be kind-of-operational, but the one Gartner likes best is (surprisingly) the one that looks most like a Gartner analyst:

“The IoT architect must take responsibility for setting and communicating the overall IoT vision, message, — and most importantly — architecture”, he writes, because without an overall vision, message and architecture, a company might end up wasting money.

To rise to these dizzy heights, you'll need technical and integration clue, business acumen, the ability to solve problems, and “organisational versatility” (that is, the ability to swap out to another internal or external role, just before the whole project tanks, so as not to turn up blood-stained to your next job interview).

I've saved the best bit for last: you don't even need to study for this one.

Reeves again: “most of these skill sets, especially the integration and ability to deal with ambiguity, are easily transferable to other jobs in IT”.

So, if you're a generic IT executive wanting to spice up your LinkedIn profile, you know what to do. ®

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